We are revisiting the Apple iPhone 6s here in 2020, discussing whether it’s, still a worthwhile budget smartphone to pick up so time really does fly. This phone, which was released in the tail end of 2015, is now almost 5 years old. The 6s and 6s plus remained the oldest iPhones in Apple’s collection to still support the latest iOS software that’s version 13, giving us the latest security as well as software tricks and features, including a system wide dark mode. But, aside from that, this phone can be found in refurbished condition, often as low as 60 bucks, if you’re shopping on Amazon or Ebay, there’s, actually still several carriers that are still selling this phone, though primarily prepaid network such as tracfone, for example, in the Android world. We recently did a throwback review of the Google pixel 2 here in 2020, which can be found for around the same price. Actually, nowadays, it shares the same aluminum construction, but it actually feels a little bit heftier compared to this 6 because of a slightly more reinforced materials. It’S made out of a 7000 series aluminum, which is more resistant to bending. Personally, I think an aluminum or metal phone, something I honestly prefer over glass when it comes to durability because it doesn’t crack as easily, for example, if you drop it, the camera protrudes ever so slightly and it’s 12 megapixels also a slight improvement over the iPhone 6, Which had just an 8 megapixel sensor along the right hand, spine there’s access to a power key, a SIM card slot on the bottom.

Here there is a single loudspeaker, but we also have a reversible, lightning, cable for charging and syncing and the ever familiar 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, which this is the last iphone to really have a standard, headphone jack. The side here also features split volume, keys, which feel very tactile and responsive and a function that is pretty much exclusive to iPhones. At this point, it’s the key that you can tap on to mute the phone and then on the front. We have access to a second generation touch ID home button, which is significantly faster than the one found on the iPhone 6 and 6 plus, which are definitely beginning to feel sluggish by today’s standards. But this one is still lightning fast and it’s. A physical button that we can use for multitasking things like going back home and for multitasking between open applications. It all works pretty well. The frontier features, a 4.7 inch Retina display and retina is just Apple’s way of saying HD. So this is just slightly above 720p. In terms of screen resolution, which isn’t outstanding but to be completely fair on a smaller screen of 4.7 inches it’s, also not the biggest deal in the world. This is an IPS LCD display, which offers very good computing angles and Apple always does a good job of color calibrating their screens to look pretty accurate. The iPhone 6s also introduced forced touch or 3d touch for the first time, it’s. Basically, a pressure sensitive screen that you can press down on and enter the screen to access additional functions like taking a look at additional options without jumping directly into an app it’s, actually a very cool trick and gives you additional interaction controls with many of the applications.

Although, unfortunately, in iOS 13, the support for forced touch is getting less and less significant, just because the latest iPhones actually no longer have force, touch, enabled several games. For example, this is kind of a drawing game that you can use and press harder to get a firmer line, as you can see there, which is just a very cool way of interacting with it. Otherwise speaking of the battery, it is definitely on the smaller side. It gets me around 4.5 hours of screen on time before the battery completely dies, sometimes around five hours or so them using it lightly and that’s enough to get me through an entire day, although it’s not a endurance King, but if you’re getting a used unit, I Would be cautious when it comes to again finding one without too many charging cycles, if possible, because of the battery degrades beyond a certain point, let’s say, but below 80 or 70 it’s not going to be the most pleasant experience anymore. Just because you’ll have to charge it much more frequently now running the show is an Apple a9 chip which has held up surprisingly well on paper it’s, only a dual core processor. But again this comes down to apple’s, optimization of their software to run really well. Even on hardware, that is doesn’t seem as fast on paper compared to say the of Android. But still it surprised me when it comes to the overall fluidity and responsiveness of the device in terms of keeping up with my finger motions and just seeming still very fast and responsive.

This is actually a significant improvement compared to the iPhone 6 and 6 plus, which by 2020 standards, definitely feels sluggish on iOS 12, but on the iPhone 6s. Thankfully, it still feels very fast and fluid, which is great to see when it comes to still giving a very responsive overall experience and there’s. Actually a few interesting aspects of the keyboard on the iPhone success as well, because it supports 3d touch. You can actually press down on the keyboard to access a trackpad mode. I can press down, and now I can slide anywhere on the keyboard to move the cursor around for more precise navigation. You can also shake the phone in order to access a undo typing command. So there are a few kind of gestures built into the keyboard. I can swipe up from the bottom of the screen to access my control panel, things like turning on or off Wi Fi bluetooth, adjusting the screen brightness. Turning on the flashlight, which you can also press down onto to adjust the kind of intensity of the flash as well to make it brighter or dimmer accordingly same thing goes with these other controls. You can kind of press down on to copy the last calculation figure with the calculator you can also press down on the camera here to take a selfie or record video slow mo, take a photo let’s jump into the camera and take a look at how that Performance has held up overall, it is definitely an improved camera experience compared to again the iPhone 6.

You do get clearer shots because of that 12 megapixels. You can zoom in more and you still get more detail as a result. It still has pretty good color contrast for a kind of camera of its age there’s access to auto HDR, which definitely helps when it comes to boosting areas like shadows and your images. You can apply different filters. The interface is still very simple and straightforward. You can capture different aspect ratios panoramic shots, slow motion up to 240 frames at 720p resolution as well as time lapse. Footage video can also be captured up to 4k, which is a step up compared to the iPhone 6, which only captured up to full HD with 32 gigabytes. You still get around 20 gigs or so to populate with your applications and photos and using some cloud storage solutions. You can definitely still get by here’s a closer look at some sample images that we captured and again in outdoors environments with good lighting. You still get some very impressive, looking shots a nice natural bouquet, even though there is no secondary lens to create that portrait effect 3d touch. Again, you can press down on to take a quick snippet of what it was like a few seconds prior to that image. So still is, I would say, a very good quality sensor, especially considering the price tag of under 100. It definitely will still best kind of many entry level smartphones that you’ll find at the same price when it comes to the color accuracy, even though it’s not quite as immersive as on a latest smartphone, that has kind of a taller 2×1 aspect ratio.

Again, we do have pretty large bezels by 2020 standards, but it’s, not anything too uncomfortable and, as you start using the phone for a little bit of time after a few hours, you kind of just forget about it. So overall, I would say not the best camera in the world anymore, but still is a pretty impressive camera for one that’s built into a older phone and on a portable device that you have on your pocket with you all the time. One function that I did think was kind of interesting that allows you to offload unused apps. So if it’s detected that applications aren’t being used too often, it can actually save those apps and move them to the cloud. So, for example, I’m, not using this Apple watch app, you can see a cloud symbol. That means that the app has its data basically loaded onto the cloud, and if I want to get it back on to the phone’s memory, I can tap on it and then it would then begin to kind of download back onto the device. It’S. Actually, a very clever trick, and one that’s quite similar to the next bit Robin a device which perhaps some of you remember as the cloud phone that I received quite a bit of media attention a few years back from the Android world. One thing that’s always been impressive about iOS has been their RAM management compared to Android, which, on paper, the iPhone 6s only has two gigabytes of RAM, which, if it was a Android, go phone at this point with all these apps, which are still open.

In the background, it would feel really slow and choppy, but it’s not the case. Here I can jump back into these apps and they’re still held into the memory. As you can see there, which is quite impressive. This is definitely a phone that gets warm. I would say warmer than typical compared to say an Android device, but it never gets too hot or uncomfortable to touch, but on this section here on the back, it definitely gets a bit warmer after you use it for more than say, 20 minutes or 30 minutes, Especially if you’re playing back a more graphically intensive game – or something like that, perhaps is one area where kind of a newer processor and chips are better optimized to handle. You know later versions of games and titles, even though on here it still feels quite smooth. It definitely gets a little bit warmer in terms of temperature. One other feature that is kind of new ish to this device is an always on Siri, so you can kind of register the digital assistant using your voice, however, Siri as a whole is not as good of a digital assistant, as the Google assistant or even Alexa. What’S the distance to the moon, it simply says here some information and just brings up a article that it’s found using Wikipedia and doesn’t even really answer the question with a distance, but rather just tells me, you know what is lunar distance overall. It still is the neat tool.

If you want to use it, it can be found all right so jumping back into the web browser using Safari. It is again extremely well optimized on the hardware. We actually have a lot of tabs open in the background and it says so is retained in the system memory, as you can see there, so the mobile version of the site is still performing pretty well. The Wi Fi reception of the phone is pretty good and also use the force touch of pressing down to access a quick preview of what some of these links are, or I can also open up a separate link copy it or share it. So the whole force touch still kind of works using links that you have using Safari. So as a whole, we still get a very good web browsing experience even on pretty complex sites. The screen is still plenty sharp and colorful for reading back texting, playing back a quick YouTube clip here, you can see the YouTube app by the way is still very smooth and responsive and we’re going to try it to test out the speakers here in a second Music, so overall the speaker itself it’s a mono unit. It does sketch occasionally covered up, unfortunately, that you don’t have kind of a stereo effect. It doesn’t come out from the earpiece, but as a whole for a budget phone it’s not too much that you can complain about. So definitely you can improve on the audio quality by using headphones using the 3.

5 millimeter jack really great to see or by using bluetooth. If you want to use some wireless pairs really, the last thing to talk about here is the performance using third party applications. So if we jump into taking a quick look at those, for example, titles like games, especially for lighter once it still does a great job with really not encountering any signs of lag or delay. This game here called force tap X, again takes advantage of the pressure sensitive screen. So you can press down harder to trigger various commands, such as pressing down harder or firmer to go through these bars that I change different colors and you have to coordinate with the color of the sphere at the bottom of the screen. If we’re talking about a slightly heavier game, such as a racing title, things which are similar to say, asphalt, 8 or pub key, it will still load it back and play, which is quite good, but that you may notice some occasional dropped frames when you are performing Along as a phone that is again almost five years old now, which is insane to think about, it still is doing surprisingly well when it comes to kind of the usability, the overall smoothness and, as you can see here, even for very graphically demanding titles, lots of Details in the background are still rendering pretty well and keeping up quite nicely as well, so that’s, more or less it as far as our hands on review of the iPhone 6s here in 2020.

Overall, as far as it being a really budget phone that you can now find for again around 60 bucks – or so I would say it definitely still is very much recommended and still rumor to receive software updates, including the next major iOS update as well. So for a device that you can find for again, only around 60 bucks it’s kind of hard to beat, especially if you are in the Apple ecosystem or at least if your friends and family are using Apple devices and you have to rely on some of their Services like FaceTime it’s, a good way to get your hands on a device that is officially supported and still running really well on the latest version of the software, but not have to spend an arm or a lake. So, if interested, you can check out more details in the links down below, but for now that’s been our video thanks for watching here.

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